User:Meggado/sandbox

Controversy Experts disagree on the conclusive definition of crowdsourcing, directly contradicting each other in some cases. Three points of contention are the necessity of the use of Internet technology, the level of crowd involvement, and the level of specificity required of the definition.

Definition debate

Experts in the field, Jeff Howe and Darren Brabham define crowdsourcing by purpose and function respectively. Jeff Howe frames crowdsourcing as the act of moving a task out of the professional market and into the hands of the crowd; whereas, Darren Brabham frames crowdsourcing as an organization using the crowd as a resource to accomplish a large task. As a result, Brabham's definition focuses more on crowdsourcing as a mechanism, a tool, not an action. Furthermore, in Brabham's definition, the Internet is a requirement for a project to be considered crowdsourcing, while in Howe's it is not.

Examples

Several projects are disputed as to whether or not they constitute crowdsourcing.

Wikipedia

References: Reference 6 Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business Daran Brabham’s typology from his 2013 “Crowdsourcing” book:

“Crowdsourcing” is a relatively recent concept that encompasses many practices. This diversity leads to the blurring of the limits of crowdsourcing that may be identified virtually with any type of Internet-based collaborative activity, such as co-creation or user innovation. Varying definitions of crowdsourcing exist and therefore, some authors present certain specific examples of crowdsourcing as paradigmatic, while others present the same examples as the opposite.

As indicated by Jeff Howe [1], the word crowdsourcing is used for a wide group of activities that take on different forms [2, 3]. The adaptability of crowdsourcing allows it to be an effective and powerful practice, but makes it difficult to define and categorize. Moreover, the theoretical knowledge base is still not solid, being developed with works like Brabham’s, in which he defines crowdsourcing [4] and creates a typology of it [5]; Vukovic’s, in which she makes a general overview of various characteristics of crowdsourcing including the kind of crowd that can participate, the incentive schema, the different variants of crowdsourcing initiatives [2], or the requirements of a crowdsourcing initiative [6]; or Geiger’s [7], in which he develops a taxonomy using different examples. Nor is there an agreed definition; instead there are a variety of definitions, which look at crowdsourcing from differing points of view including problem resolution [8, 9] or innovation applied to business process improvement [10, 4]. Depending upon the perspective and the definition used, certain initiatives classified by some authors as crowdsourcing, are not classified as such by others. For example, Buecheler et al. [11] consider Wikipedia to be an example of crowdsourcing, as Huberman et al. [12] do of YouTube, while Kleeman et al. [13] declare the opposite in both cases. The abundance of definitions also means that crowdsourcing cannot be coherently classified, as occurs in Andriole [14], where crowdsourcing is identified with other web 2.0 technologies. In the search for a common definition, an etymological analysis does not prove to be useful. The name crowdsourcing is formed from two words, crowd, making reference to the people who participate in the initiatives, and the word sourcing, which refers to a number of procurement practices aimed at finding, evaluating, and engaging suppliers of goods and services. Following this approach, authors such as Jeff Howe affirm that crowdsourcing “is a business practice that means literally to outsource an activity to the crowd” [15]. However, to adopt the etymological significance as a definition is too discriminatory [1].

Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Author	Bronisław Malinowski
Illustrator	First edition cover
Language	English
Series	Studies in economics and political science, no. 65.
Subject	Ethnography
Publisher	London, G. Routledge & Sons; New York, E.P. Dutton & Co.
Publication date	1922
OCLC	647026285
Followed by	The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, Coral Gardens and Their Magic

Argonauts of the Western Pacific, properly Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, is a 1922 ethnological work by Bronisław Malinowski with enormous impact on the ethnographic genre. About the Trobriand people who live on the small Kiriwana island chain northeast of the island of New Guinea, the book is part of Malinowski's trilogy on the Trobrianders; the other books include The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929) and Coral Gardens and Their Magic (1935).

Overview

The book consists of twenty-two chapters divided into six distinct sections. General summaries of each section are included below.

• Introduction: Malinowski's famous general statement of the aims of ethnography

• Chapters I-III: setting the scene and sketching the structure; from the broad survey of Kula District (I) to intensive fieldwork (II-III); "native" life (II), structural overview of the kula (III)

• Chapters IV-XVI: the kula by example; "a consecutive narrative" from the earliest preparations of canoe-building through extended voyaging from Sinaketa to Dobu and back

• Chapters XVII-XVIII: on magic and language

• Chapters XIX-XXI: three permutations of basic kula pattern: the inland kula (XIX), a Kiriwina-Kitava expedition (XX), and "the remaining branches and offshoots of the kula" (XXI)

• Chapter XXII: a summary statement of "the meaning of the kula"

Development

Argonauts of the Western Pacific developed from anthropological research which Bronislaw Malinowski described as "off the verandah". Unlike the armchair anthropology of previous researchers, this method was characterized by participant observation: informal interviews, direct observation, participation in the life of the group, collective discussions, analyses of personal documents produced within the group, self-analysis, results from activities undertaken off or online, and life-histories.

Impact

Considered the first modern ethnography, Argonauts of the Western Pacific redefined the ethnographic genre. Adam Kuper, in his seminal 1973 book on British social anthropology, begins his analysis with Malinowski's status as the founder of the discipline:

"Malinowski has a strong claim to being the founder of the profession of social anthropology in Britain, for he established its distinctive apprenticeship -- intensive fieldwork in an exotic community."

Many other anthropologists also trace the fieldwork mandate back to Malinowski, including Murray Wax:

"In the final analysis, the major credit for discovering the technique of intensive personal fieldwork among a single people must go to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942). His researches among the Trobriand Islanders during the years 1916-18 yielded a series of epochal volumes which revolutionized the content and practice of anthropology."

Today, Argonauts of the Western Pacific is the archetypal account of anthropologists' "following the people" method of collecting information for a multi-sited ethnography.

External links

• Argonauts of the Western Pacific at the Internet Archive
• Downloadable copy from Wolne Lektury

References

Category:1922 books Category:Anthropology books Category:Routledge books